Happy Birthday Zoraya! We Love and Miss You So Much!!

Happy Birthday to You!

We Love You

We Think About You

We Miss You

All the Time!

She's a soft cool rain on a hot summer’s day.

She makes me laugh with the funny things she has to say.

She's the beat of my heart, and the air that I breathe.

She's the sun and the wind, and autumn’s golden leaves.

She's the pride that I feel when I know she's done what’s right.

She's that warm feeling I get, when I remember tucking her in at night.

You are a princess in my heart, and I care for you so much.I love the fondness in your eyes and your tender little touch.

I looked at you when you were born,And knew then straight away,That I would be forever hereTo watch you grow and play.

You bring to me a heart of joy, and memories so great,And a powerful sense of fatherhood that no one can debate.

I use to watch you sleep and dream of things that I can only wonder.

That innocent look upon your face just made my heart grow fonder.

I use to see you run and jump and shout and calling out my name...Papi!!

No love that I have ever known could ever feel the same.

No suffering or tragedy nor deeply seated pain could ever over shadow the bond that we retain.

And so my little princess before you go to sleep, Remember I am your daddy and I am yours to keep.

A Fight for Respect, the Struggles, and the Hopes of Disabled Parents

Children's Rights and Family Law Reform from David Inguanzo

A Topic Worthy of Awareness

Support for

Special Needs

Excerpt: 

As a parent of a daughter for whom all this will depart the realm of the theoretical, I confess that the best part of this isn't the information that's available, although that's nice. For me, it's a great comfort just to hear someone else, particularly government agencies, say "Yeah, this is a big deal. Let's look at this and see what can be done." 

That's not a small thing, not at all.
by Rob Rummel-Hudson 

The Rights of Non-Custodial Parents

Lowell father's 12-year battle a key factor in bill before Legislature to change visitation rights

LOWELL -- It has been more than a decade since Shawn Gillespie's acrimonious divorce turned into a custody battle that drained him mentally, physically and financially.

After only a year of marriage and one son, Gillespie and his wife split in 2002, triggering a downhill spiral that forced him to spend thousands of dollars in lawyers' fees and court costs, and lost time at work, in a battle for visitation rights to see his son.

"I had the fight of my life,'' said the 51-year-old truck driver from Lowell.  Gillespie said he was stymied by judges who sided with his ex-wife, who took out a restraining order against Gillespie, creating a legal barrier for him to see his son.  "I was in and out of court for years," he said.

Shawn Gillespie

Sun staff photos can be ordered by visiting ourSmugMug site.

"The courts are a legal vehicle to shatter someone's life.''

Fathers, he said, "always seem to get the short end of the stick.''Thirteen years later, there are fewer issues surrounding visitation since Gillespie's every-other-weekend visitation schedule now revolves around his teenage son's schedule of school, friends and sports. But the years have not lessened Gillespie's bitterness about how he was treated by the courts.

"The system is broken and unfair toward dads,'' he said.  'Utopia doesn't exist'

Ned Holstein, founder of National Parents Organization, agrees.

"Utopia doesn't exist,'' Holstein said, at least not in the world of divorce and child-custody battles.

But a proposed bill, called the Massachusetts Child-Centered Family Law, strives to overhaul the state's outdated child-custody law and supports a "more modern understanding'' of what is in the best interest of children when parents divorce, Holstein said.

Child custody and time-sharing; the relationship continues

Who is going to have custody of children when the couple separate or divorce? This decision has to be made along with, how the children will be taken care of and the visitation, the how of each parent spending time with the children. Relationships cause connectedness and there are orders to abide by. There are two types of custody orders.

There is Legal custody. The parent who has the custody will be important decision maker about the child’s health care, doctor, dentist, orthodontist, psychiatric, mental health counseling, therapy,education, religious activities or institutions, welfare, school, childcare, sports, summer camp, vacation, or extracurricular activities, travel, and place of residence.

There is also physical custody, ordering with whom the child will live. In joint custody the child can live with both. Under sole or primary custody the child will live with one parent much of the time and visits the other parent usually. There are cases of judges allowing parents joint legal custody and not joint physical custody, both parents share the responsibility in important decision making and the child lives with one parent and the other receives visitation right.

There is visitation plan to prevent and reduce confusion, anger and further conflict. Under supervised visitation, when the child's safety and well-being is at issue or if the child and the other parent would need gradual exposure, it is supervised by custodial parent, an adult, a professional agency or a mental health counselor. There is also a “no visitation” rule about that, even if with supervision, physical and/or emotional welfare of the child can be jeopardized. When visitation, custody or time share plan is drawn the above issues are clarified.

There are visitation guidelines, also known as time-share. Here a plan is set about how the both parents will share the time with the children. Either one (sole custody) or both parents (called shared custody) can have custody. Under normal circumstances, the judge consorts about arrangements with the parents and reaches a final decision about custody and visitation. If there is disagreement between the parents the judge will make that decision at a hearing. There is usually a mediator about custody and visitation. The family court services provide the mediator for the parents to reconcile.

Custody and visitation is decided considering the best interest of the child’s health, safety and wellbeing. Here history of abuse by either or both parents is considered.

The rights that children have to free and equal association with both fit parents...

...that should not be invaded by the State or infringed upon by another parent.

NO...STILL DON'T SEE THE PROBLEM? 

THINK THIS IS NOT TRUE?

WATCH THIS VIDEO ABOUT HOW FATHERS IN MIAMI-DADE COUNTY'S 11TH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT FAMILY COURT, IN FLORIDA,  HAVE TO "UNJUSTIFIABLY" PROVE "PARENTAL FITNESS"

The CEO of The Fatherhood Taskforce speaking before the Florida Supreme Court Committee on the Future of Florida's Courts.

How Divorced Parents and Children Lose Their Rights

Emery makes many good suggestions in his article called............ “How Divorced Parents Lost Their Rights” and has a good grasp on the process from a psychology perspective. We are, of course constitutional scholars and would like to offer a perspective that hopefully integrates and supports most but not all of what Emery says.

For instance Emery suggests that courts do not involve themselves with parenting disagreements between married parents because judges would make things a mess. They would of course  but that is NOT the legal reason that they stay out of it. The legal reason is that people have the right to make decisions free from government interference. These rights are called privacy rights. Parents have privacy rights to make decisions for their children and the State may not interfere unless the state can show a clear and present danger to the child from these decisions.

Why do family law courts treat married and divorced parents differently? Many people do not realize that parental rights do not depend on marriage and in fact cannot depend on marital status in any way. A hundred years ago this wasn’t so and our family law codes have not caught up with this concept. Up until the early 1970s some states still had bastardy laws on their books that tied the rights of parents and children to the marital status of the child’s parents. In a series of landmark decisions, the US Supreme Court stated very clearly that states may not create second-class parents or second-class children based on nothing more than the marital status of the child’s parents.

Family law has not caught up to this idea because of religious and cultural preconditioning. In other words our society builds into us a series of biases and prejudices against single and divorced parents that is so deep most people don’t even realize it is driving their behavior. Most people believe that it is completely legitimate to invade the privacy of single/divorced parents even where they believe that the privacy of married parents must be preserved. Constitutionally, this is a completely bankrupt idea. Unfortunately, judges, attorneys, and mental health professionals are almost universally so caught up in these biases they refuse to acknowledge their professional training and simply default to bigoted behaviors without even realizing that is what they are doing. (It’s easy to fall into following statistics to guide decisions. Individuals can choose to follow these as their guide. It is not how the law should be deciding individual rights.)

- See more at: http://www.fixfamilycourts.com/how-divorced-parents-and-children-lose-their-rights/#sthash.LeijUpEd.dpuf

Are you sick, tired, broke and frustrated with the difficulty of trying to get the courts to admit you have equal rights...
Posted by Protecting Parent Child Bonds 28th Amendment on Saturday, June 27, 2015

When this Amendment is passed parents will not have to reference countless Supreme Court opinions, they will only have to say I have 28th Amendment rights to be a parent and no Divorce Court can ever deprive me of those rights so long as I am a fit parent.This book is intended to be a tool for citizen activists who want change to the system but who may struggle with all of the technical arguments. Now all you have to do to support change is hand this book to your politician of choice and say, “I want this, make it happen.””

Post by parentalrights.org.

Guns Don't Kill People Single Parent Homes Do!

Rick Santorum: Guns Don't Kill People, Single Parent Homes Do

What if you get pregnant, your partner has abandoned you, and you happen to live in Missouri where there is ONE clinic which provides abortions? What if you're also financially or geographically unable to exercise that particular option? The Republicans have made sure that you must birth that baby, welcome to single-parenthood! According to GOP Presidential 'hopeful' Rick Santorum, you will be the leading cause of gun violence. You thought things were bleak and hopeless before, now you're carrying the weight of this country's gun violence problem squarely on your expectant shoulders.

Children Lost in Divorce

The gift of parenting children is the single greatest blessing and experience an individual can enjoy in life. Therefore to me, parenting rights are not a “special rights” concern; they are a “human rights” concern.

So, I want to ask where you stand on an important political issue: Family Law Reform.As you may or may not be aware, our current system of Family Law has devolved into one in which a whole host of Family Court Industry players are profiteering from the minimization or elimination of parenting time and rights for non-custodial parents.

Many custodial parents, lawyers, parenting plan evaluators, supervised parenting services, States, friends of the Court social workers, many Courts, and others; are making money by using children as an excuse to exploit non-custodial parents, causing irreparable harm to both children and their parents in the process.

I, and a rapidly growing base of many others, would like this to stop. More specifically, we are asking for five primary reforms to Family Law:

The presumption of 50/50 custody and parenting rights during and after divorce. We are NOT asking for a REQUIREMENT of 50/50, because we still want parents to be able to decide for themselves what works best for them. However, in the event that case goes to trial, instead of having the NCP being forced to rise to a high standard to show why they should have time with their children, I believe it’s far healthier (for both parents and children) for the parent contesting this time to be required to rise to a high standard to show why the NCP should NOT have equal time with their children. And while this may dramatically hit the financial accounts of those who are using children for profit by creating or aggravating conditions of conflict, this reform will affect far healthier outcomes for families.

I would like reforms to child support calculations. More specifically, an elimination of financial incentives for minimizing or eliminating a non-custodial parent’s time with their little ones. As it sits now, there are basically two pieces to the child support calculation: (1) An actual physical needs worksheet, and (2) A tax-free income redistribution; with the Court establishing the higher of the two as the child support order. I recognize that custodial parents may need some time to adjust after divorce, and I have no problems with alimony/maintenance. However, I would like the alimony portion of child support to be eliminated. If a CP wants to better their lifestyle, they can put the work into bettering themselves just like NCP’S are often admonished to do. Children are NOT tax-free income producing assets, and NCP’s are NOT indentured servants.

Reforms to child support enforcement: If one wants to accomplish a goal, it helps establish good or helpful conditions to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, the Family Court has become accustomed to pathological and often draconian measures for enforcement in which the civil rights of NCP’s are systematically ignored or eliminated through administrative court procedures. If a person loses their job, or becomes ill or disabled, it makes no sense what so ever, to take away their driver’s license, vocational license, destroy their credit, throw them in jail, or force them into homelessness. How does this help to ensure the support gets caught-up? It doesn’t. It simply makes the problem worse and sets the non-custodial parent up for future, life-destroying failures. Truthfully, current regimes for enforcement that treat "deadbroke" parents as common criminals are completely inappropriate.

Social Security Act, Title IV, Part D, Section 458 "Incentive Payments To States": I have no problem, in theory, with states being rewarded for child support enforcement. However, I have a big problem with States profiting from it, and a REALLY big problem with the lack of resources available to NCP’s for visitation enforcement. For little or no cost, a CP can have the state pursue civil or criminal remedies for delinquent child support. However, an NCP in reality, must hire an attorney if his or her visitation orders are being ignored, and often, these orders are not enforced with anywhere near the same severity by the Court as they are with child support orders. And I’m confident this is happening in large part, due to the financial interests of those parties noted in paragraph four. Therefore, if there is going to be Federal incentives for the enforcement of Family Court orders, I want equal weighting and importance put the enforcement of visitation orders. Honestly, the message that money is more important than a parent’s relationship and the emotional well-being of children is remarkably disgusting. I simply can’t tolerate that kind of worldview.

VAWA reform. I agree that victims of abuse and violence need the ability to feel safe in swiftly seeking the protection of the Justice system. However, fraudulent allegations of abuse made during Family Court are getting out of control. This is a gender-neutral problem, and it seems it now boils down to which party can launch this nuclear attack first. There are no remedies available to the victims of fraudulent allegations – none, and the damage these allegations cause to both children and parents is catastrophic.

The American Bar Association loves to fall back on VAWA as its reasoning for opposing any kind of Family Law reform. However, I can’t help but wonder how much money attorneys and investigators are making from a law that allows someone to be accused of such a serious crime and presumed guilty of it with no credible evidence what-so-ever. Something needs to be done about this, right now.

In short, much of the current political and judicial rationalizing for the current structure of Family Law centers on the concept of what’s “in the best interests of the children”. However, what is becoming increasingly clear is that children are simply being used as a seemingly noble excuse to mask a greedier underlying motive that is causing significant and irreparable harm to parents and children alike.

I understand you can expect to receive significant resistance to my ideas for reform because those parties noted earlier have a great deal to lose when they take place.

However, I’m not concerned about them. I’m concerned about the health and well-being children and parents, and your position on this matter will affect my voting behavior going forward.

Therefore, I will be grateful if you will tell me, in plain and simple words, where you stand on Family Law Reform.

Thank you so much for your time.

Sincerely,

Children's Rights

Published bychildrensrightsflorida@clubmember.org

Let's Join The Purple Keyboard Campaign((Activate :2015))4 Family Justice Reform!

 — at Let us be excellent to each other in 2015.

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How do I protect my kids from my ex turning them against me?

From Temporary or Trial Arrangement as Stay at Home Parent, to Primary Caregiver Designated at Trial

Basics of Child Custody/Timesharing in Florida

At some point, when pondering divorce, parents worry about how child custody /timesharing arrangements will get decided. Florida's laws regarding child custody / timesharing focus on the rights and best interest of children. That means under reasonable circumstances, divorcing parents in Jupiter, Delray or Wellington can expect to receive plenty of quality time with their kids.

Florida courts use the term "Time-Sharing" as the designation of visitation/contact. According to About.com's Single Parent pages, Time-Sharing is  "a type of visitation where one parent is awarded majority timesharing of a child while the other parent is awarded generous visitation."

Physical custody in some states means the primary residence of the child or children.

Debrina Washington, author of the About.com article says that "best interest of the child" guides judges to review parental dynamics. 

They look at mom and dad's attitudes towards positively supporting the child's relationship with the other parent, their intention to remain levelheaded when real life changes occur, their desire to place the child's needs first, and their ability to be involved in the child's school or other activities.

Add to that the stability of each parent's home, his or her physical and mental health, and any history of child abuse and the court can make a reasonable assessment for custody sharing.

Florida Statute § 61.13 outlines the 24 best interest factors that Florida judges consider in divorce cases.

Once the timesharing arrangements are prescribed by a judge, it takes "substantial, material, or unanticipated change in circumstances" to have the order modified. This must be legally shown by the modifying parent and must continue to uphold the interest of the child.

In divorce, time with children becomes more precious. Understanding Florida's laws and the rights of children to be with both parents is important. To get assistance with child custody, contact an attorney board certified in marital and family law in your area.